ARMENIA-IRAN: NEIGHBORS VIEW ENERGY DEVELOPMENT AS PROMISING AREA FOR COOPERATION
By Naira Hayrumyan
ArmeniaNow correspondent
06.06.11 | 11:45
A week ago in Tehran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was
receiving an Armenian delegation headed by Minister of Energy and
Natural Resources Armen Movsisyan, and this week the Iranian leader
himself was expected to visit Armenia.
(However, the sides, reportedly by mutual agreement, postponed the
visit and said it would take place at “a mutually agreeable time”.)
At the meeting in Tehran it was noted that energy is the most promising
areas of cooperation between Iran and Armenia.
However, judging by the fact that cooperation in the fields of energy
and communications is developing very slowly, and lucrative investment
projects remain on paper, experts believe that the visit of the
Iranian president had been designed more for political purposes to
prove that not all neighboring countries are unfriendly towards Iran.
As recently as a few days ago Israeli President Shimon Peres said that
it was time to encircle Iran with a reliable network of medium-range
air defense. The United States did not respond to this statement,
but Moscow sharply stated that there is no evidence that Iran is
developing a nuclear weapon. “We have no evidence that Iran has made
a political decision to produce a nuclear bomb,” said Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov in an interview with American news agency
Bloomberg. According to him, one should rely not on “new sanctions
and threats, but on negotiations, like in any other situation in the
world today.”
Armenia and Karabakh are perhaps the only neighbors of Iran where
the West cannot easily deploy a missile defense system. Armenia
hosts a Russian military base, and Karabakh, which de facto shares
a 140-kilometer-long border with Iran, is in a shaky political
situation. On June 25, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will host a
summit of the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan and this meeting
may produce an agreement on basic principles of Karabakh settlement.
Azerbaijan has already stated that at the initial stage it expects
Armenian troops to withdraw from Aghdam and Fizuli. And Fizuli
borders on Iran, which means that peacekeeping or other forces of
third countries may appear there.
Perhaps this was one of the reasons for which the Iranian president
had planned his trip to Armenia – perhaps to convince Armenia to
resist the pressure.
Tehran views Armenia as a natural and quite reliable partner, and
Armenia is also of interest as a country with fairly developed
relations with both the West and Russia. In conditions of an
unprecedented rapprochement between Turkey and Russia, Russia’s
ignoring the national interests of Armenia and Iran, Russia’s
cooperation in the military-technical spheres with Turkey and
Azerbaijan, Armenia and Iran are thrust together, demonstrating their
desire to establish closer relations, analyst Igor Muradyan believes.
Turkey has already stated that it would not participate in
possible sanctions against Iran. Now Armenia will closely watch the
implementation of Iran’s intentions to build a railway that will give
Iran a pass to the Black Sea through Armenia and Georgia. Iran’s
Deputy Minister of Roads and Transport Reza Pilpayeh noted that
Iranian builders can construct a railroad from Julfa to the border
town of Nurduz and from the border to the town of Sisian in Armenia.
According to Pilpayeh’s estimation, the construction of a railway
till Sisian will require more than $2.5 billion.